Pokemon Snap originally was Pokemon-less
Kirby wasnt just the only Nintendo character put into a game at a later stage
Last week we learnt that Kirbys Epic Yarn wasnt originally a Kirby title, that he was added in at a later stage. Now in the same Iwatas Ask feature more information has come forward about how Pokémon Snap originally wasnt even a Pokémon game.
Iwata, in speaking to the developers of Kirbys Epic Yarn, said that "originally, Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo 64 system wasnt a Pokémon game, but rather a normal game in which you took photos, but the motivation for playing the game wasnt clear. We wondered what players would enjoy taking pictures of, and later on we made a somewhat forced switch to taking pictures of Pokémon."
Like Kirby, the staff of Pokémon Snap werent initially happy with the characters they had designed being replaced. Masanobu Yamamoto from HAL, who worked on Snap, said that he "was involved as a designer, so when characters other than the ones [they] had designed were used, [he] had a slightly negative reaction to it."
However, adopting the Pokémon world wasnt all bad as it gave the guys a direction the game should head and eventually they came to like Pokémon. Just how many other Nintendo games are out there that previously existed without Nintendo characters?
Source: ONM UK